Resources: Graphics: digiKam

As promised earlier today, we present a graphics program counterpart to Gwenview for Windows and OS X. Of course digiKam is available for Linux as well. It has all of the features you would expect in an image viewer / browser / organizer plus some extensive capability with metadata not found in similar applications. However, it can be a challenge to get it installed, at least on OS X. We think it is worth the effort to at least try it…

ADDITIONAL: A few suggestions came in since the mention of Gwenview about other free software for image management. Notable was repeat mention of Picasa. It is free (sort of) but not true Open Source software. While the latter is not required for inclusion in the NDAS “Resources for Authors” section, there are other issues which are more problematic.

It is continuously reported that Picasa overwrites and/or deletes some forms of metadata, including camera and photography industry standards. There are also reports that it is deeply tied to required (?) use of some Google services. We cannot attest to the truth of all claims, as we are not fans of Google software in general.

We have installed others of their applications on isolated and secured machines only to find some package attempt external connections without user permission or (sometimes) knowledge. There were strange system level calls being made as well. All of this leads us to state for now we will not have time to test Picasa thoroughly and therefor it will not be added to our recommended and/or optional applications.